DAYENU (It Would Have Been Enough)
Just a week after Passover 2020 ended and I’ve had some time to reflect on the familiar song chanted at the Seder table each year, celebrating what God did for the Jews in bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and into their faith and homeland. It is fifteen verses and refrains that go on for quite awhile as the hungry chant along, even hungrier by song’s conclusion. You may feel the same way as you read through the greatest hits of the self-labeled chosen one’s three plus years, anxious to get to the end. Or maybe you’d like four more years and some new verses. Celebration or dirge? I suppose it all depends on who’s singing the refrain.
If he would have just obsessed on Hillary and the election,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just sabotaged the Affordable Care Act,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just been a very stable genius,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just played golf two hundred days of his presidency,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just blown the budget on a Mexican wall,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just revoked clean water and flood prevention regulations and opened most of the country’s coastline to oil drilling,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just had the MyPillow guy at the White House during the pandemic to urge prayer,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just labeled the failure of Democrats to applaud his State of the Union as an act of treason,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just embraced Norway while referencing other shithole countries,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just mused about injecting disinfectant to combat coronavirus,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just coined derogatory middle school nicknames for his opponents,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just admired the Chinese leader for becoming president for life and thought that might be something for America to consider,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just hired Stephen Miller, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, William Barr, Tom Price, John Bolton, Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Rudy Guiliani, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Kayleigh McEnany, Sebastian Gorka, Peter Navarro, and Kirstjen Nielsen,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just signed a massive tax giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just instructed White House staff to ignore subpoenas from the United States House of Representatives,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just thrown the paper towel rolls in Puerto Rico,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just praised Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Rodrigo Duterte,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just labeled the Mueller Report as a witch hunt,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just separated families and caged children,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just mocked Christine Blasey Ford and lauded Brett Kavanaugh,
it would have been enough,
If he had just canceled the White House subscriptions to the New York Times and Washington Post,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just labeled his impeachment another witch hunt,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just used his not-for-profit charitable foundation for his election campaign,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just taken no responsibility at all for the coronavirus pandemic,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just suggested an electrified moat filled with alligators along the southern border with Mexico and shooting migrants in the legs,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just shut down the federal government for five weeks,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just condemned Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee for social justice and alluded to the good people on both sides at Charlottesville,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just added five trillion dollars to the national debt,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just pardoned Arizona’s Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the US Army’s Michael Chase Behenna,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just switched from despising North Korea’s Rocket Man to befriending him to despising him again,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just unnerved and alienated NATO and the United Nations,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just known more than the generals and the doctors,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just skewed the federal courts for the next generation or two,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just questioned the late Senator John McCain’s heroism,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just divided America along racial and economic lines while managing to unite Denmark against an American takeover of Greenland,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just given the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Russ Limbaugh,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just sought to defund Planned Parenthood,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just dismissed anyone not named Hannity or Dobbs as Fake News,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just fired Sally Yates, James Comey, Andrew McCabe,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just encouraged fracking, vitiated the EPA, dropped out of the Paris Accord, and denied climate change,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just blamed everything going wrong on his predecessor,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just rolled back common sense gun control restrictions,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just made a mockery of the Constitution,
it would have been enough,
If he would have just told the truth once in a blue moon,
that….would have been too much.